The Leeds United fan whose job is to play Football Manager and research Marcelo Bielsa's Whites

As much as he might protest that there is much more to his roles as features designer and Leeds United researcher for Football Manager developer Sports Interactive [SI], he is essentially living two dreams.

A former actor with an economics degree, Wassell fell in love with Leeds around the same time as he first encountered the football management computer game.

His dad was responsible for introducing him to both.

“I was 10 years old, it was New Year’s Day 2001,” he told the YEP. “He took me to the Middlesbrough match, we drew 1-1.

“That was my first live match and you go around the concourse and walk out into the seats, see the lights and the fans Since then it was Leeds for me.

“My first game was CM00/01. I’d play it with my dad in his house in Leeds.

“You go see Leeds play then you’d go home and feel you can definitely do better, trying to get a diamond to work with Harry Kewell, Robbie Keane, Alan Smith, Mark Viduka and Robbie Fowler all in the same side.”

Therein lies the beauty of the game that, after developers SI split with publisher Eidos, became Football Manager.

Most fans would admit to an unshakeable belief that they know their club’s best formation, the substitutions and signings that should be made.

Football Manager is a proving ground for that belief.

“A guy got a job at a lower league Spanish club based on his Football Manager CV,” says Wassell.

“He had managed them all the way to the top.

“It may be testament to how close to real life we make the game.”

Some players just want to sign players, pick the team and play. Others, like Wassell himself, prefer a more in-depth experience and minute detail.

His initial role at SI was in quality assurance and he worked on a training revamp that gave managers greater control over the work their players got through in midweek.

The 30-year-old also worked on finances, player progression and other long-term aspects.

To do so he had to play, but not as you or I would play.

“I guess like any QA tester you need to play the game to ensure it works. But especially with something like FM, it’s less playing and more turning the game into spreadsheets and finding out if things work.

“A lot of the areas I work on, player progression and injury models, you could play the game for 20 years with one save and the things you see happen at your club aren’t necessarily indicative of the overall picture.

“The best way to really test it was to set off several games all at the same time, we can probably do 20 to 30, gather all the data, stick it into spreadsheets and start looking at patterns.”

It helps that he likes to play the game the traditional way, too: “You spend so much time working on it that when we release it, you want to separate work from play a little bit.

“I use it all day to test the game and work stuff out but try to leave my just-for-fun save until later in the year. Because I do the Leeds research, I’ll start with them earlier in the year but because a lot of it is my stuff it almost feels like cheating. I know who I’ve said could become a good youngster.

“I tend to play with the club where I was born, Leamington FC. The last two years I’ve taken them from bottom to top.

“This year I’ve done from Vanarama North/South level to the Premier League with consecutive promotions, which is probably the best I’ve ever done.”

His new role, which came up in 2019, sees him working on features, like ‘club vision’ which allows managers to contribute to the club culture, ongoing objectives and five-year plan. But that’s just one of his SI hats. The other sees him studying Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds as one of the 1,000-plus researchers who collate data to make Football Manager more lifelike.

Wassell watches every fixture, twice.

“It involves me watching as much Leeds as I possibly can, submitting my subjective but monitored opinion on player attributes, wages, the club’s financial structure, educated guesses from what people like the YEP put out in the media, what we can ascertain from the club, how it operates,” he said.

“It goes through a standardisation process to make sure I haven’t made Patrick Bamford the best striker in the world.

“Little bits of information as you go, helps. I have a massive note document on my phone, my Leeds research doc.

“When Charlie Taylor said he didn’t want to sign a new contract and would leave on a free at the end of the season, I made a note and put it in. We had a device in the game where a player didn’t want to sign a new deal and wanted to leave on a free.”

All that time spent watching Leeds might be more of a chore if it weren’t for Bielsa, his style of football and their status as genuine title contenders.

“It feels like the first time that it’s purely good stuff since it all went downhill after the Champions League days” he said.

“The Simon Grayson era was good but it almost feels like we, as Leeds United fans can be proud of it again. I enjoy the football we play, I enjoy Bielsa as a person, his outlook on life, which is something I can learn from. The fact that we’re playing well and doing well in the table is pretty much the dream combination.”

So if they do go up, will he play FM as Leeds manager, in the Premier League?

“I will definitely do Leeds in any future version,” he said.

“But getting promoted back to the Premier League would mean we’re one step closer to winning the Champions League on Football Manager.

“I quite like starting down the bottom, I enjoy that struggle all the way up. Maybe that sums up Leeds, the struggle being the fun part.”